Fish-based livelihoods play a critical role in the community economies of Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. Improved livelihoods of people who catch, process or trade fish, is a critical pathway to their poverty reduction. Regional and national development policies and strategies acknowledge the importance of fish-based livelihoods (e.g. SPC, 2015; SIG, 2016; DRTL, 2011, 2017a; World Bank, 2017), but we know very little about how to best enable innovation in these production systems to improve inclusive economic growth. State-led and aid funded development programs continue to pursue costly 50 year old top-down blueprints (e.g. construction of infrastructure, fleet mechanisation programs, alternative mariculture activities, or deep-sea fishing methods), which supply an alternative activity based on ¿outside¿ or ¿expert¿ priorities (Benediktsson, 2002; Gillett et al., 2008; Marocchino 2009), do not sufficiently consider gender (Lawless et al., 2017; Stacey et al., 2019) and have not been systematically evaluated (Gillett, 2012).
Fish-based livelihoods play a critical role in the community economies of Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. Improved livelihoods of people who catch, process or trade fish, is a critical pathway to their poverty reduction. Regional and national development policies and strategies acknowledge the importance of fish-based livelihoods (e.g. SPC, 2015; SIG, 2016; DRTL, 2011, 2017a; World Bank, 2017), but we know very little about how to best enable innovation in these production systems to improve inclusive economic growth. State-led and aid funded development programs continue to pursue costly 50 year old top-down blueprints (e.g. construction of infrastructure, fleet mechanisation programs, alternative mariculture activities, or deep-sea fishing methods), which supply an alternative activity based on ¿outside¿ or ¿expert¿ priorities (Benediktsson, 2002; Gillett et al., 2008; Marocchino 2009), do not sufficiently consider gender (Lawless et al., 2017; Stacey et al., 2019) and have not been systematically evaluated (Gillett, 2012).
